IV.

(Book II. p. 159.)

SPAIN TO ST. DOMINGO.

By favor of the crisis of the United States, the Spanish government has just accepted the annexation to Spain of the part of St. Domingo, or Hayti, formerly possessed by this monarchy. The President of this Republic, General Santana, by an address of March 18, 1861, transmitted to the Captain-General of Cuba, conveyed the wishes of the people to the Queen, who received and ratified them by a decree of March 19, 1861, thus reincorporating into the monarchy the first island of Central America, of which the immortal Columbus took possession.

This event is a happy one. To the separation, the planters were indebted for the abolition of slavery; but, a prey to continual agitation, they could only find peace and civilization in the union to a great European power. Liberty is not threatened. The statement which preceded the decree declares that slavery, shamefully called by Marshal O'Donnell the indispensable plague-spot of the colonies, is in no wise necessary to the working of these fertile territories, and affirms that the government will never dream of re-establishing it. If this be so, the problem of the colonization of the tropics will be resolved on this spot of the globe, - without the white race, no progress; without the black race, no labor; with slavery, the debasement of both, corruption and scandal, then ruin, or war; with the coexistence of the two races, and their free and friendly relations, begin the true foundation of the colonies. Spain will be led to free the slaves at Cuba and Porto Rico, hitherto menaced within and without. Mistress of these three gems of the Gulf of Mexico, the neighbor of Mexico itself, the keeper of the future Panama Canal, Spain will see her colonial grandeur spring up anew, and may become the happy benefactress of some of those magnificent regions bestowed on her by the Creator, and which she corrupted, stained with blood, and then lost, after having discovered them.

(See the curious article of M. Lepelletier Saint-Remy; Saint-Domingue et les nouveaux intérêts maritimes de l'Espagne, Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1861.)

V.

A CONCORDAT BETWEEN THE HOLY SEE AND THE REPUBLIC OF HAYTI.

THERE are lands, admirable through climate, soil, and situation, of which history makes mention but once in a century, and then to say little of them, and above all, little good. The great island of Hayti, one of the largest and most fertile on the globe, is among these lands. What was it from creation to the close of the fifteenth century of our era? We are ignorant. Then history teaches us that the immortal Columbus discovered it in 1492, and named it Hispaniola; that the Spaniards by horrible massacres exterminated the natives; that two hundred years after (1697), France settled it; that under the shadow of our flag, a handful of Frenchmen enriched themselves there by the labor of the wretched slaves; that a hundred years later (1791), a new massacre, as if to avenge the first, expelled the French, who persisted in unsuccessfully attempting to retake this land where fever united with hatred to oppose them; that a gross but free government was finally installed; that from a remarkable man, Toussaint l'Ouverture, it fell from generals to presidents, from presidents to an emperor, from an emperor to a president, so that the island of Hayti counts its years by its revolutions, and always independent, never peaceful, it has recently passed into the more intelligent hands of a new president.

In France, where the indemnity due the former colonists is not yet liquidated, where the grandsons of the massacred planters are still living, where the companions in arms of General Leclerc have their heirs, the name of St. Domingo recalls only the saddest memories. These memories have long been turned to account against the abolition of slavery, although this commonplace is a twofold error.

The disturbances at St. Domingo were caused by the refusal of the free whites to recognize the rights of the free mulattoes; these disturbances broke out in 1791, 1792, and 1793; but it was in 1794 that slavery was abolished by the Convention. What was this prejudice of the whites against the colored men, if not a result of slavery ? At what flame, too, was kindled the hatred of the blacks when it burst forth? The memories of slavery, the fear of relapsing into it. Had the whites diffused happiness, love, and enlightenment around them?

After a century, a great deal of sugar and coffee had been sold, enormous fortunes, encumbered with still more enormous debts, had been acquired; fine cultivation had been effected; but what progress had instruction, religion, and morality made, save on a few exceptional plantations? The negroes returned in stabs what their fathers had received in lashes, force avenged itself on force, and all of these horrors denounced slavery by polluting liberty.

It is said, "See what the blacks have made of the land." I answer, "Tell me what the whites had made of the race." I grant that, without the whites, the blacks have profited little by the gifts of the Creator. What would the whites have done with them, had their estates been restored to them without the blacks?

The state of affairs is exaggerated, moreover. Hayti has an indolent, gross, inferior society, nevertheless it is a society, with laws, taxes, an army, a government. Formerly it was an establishment for compulsory labor, recruited by the slave-trade, worked by cupidity, guarded by fear. On the recognition of the island by France, in 1826, M. Humann uttered these noble words:

"One day, the descendants and heirs of the conquerors of St. Domingo, seeing the conquered population dwindling away and disappearing, bethought themselves to seek for money in distant lands, a savage, but robust race, capable of enduring the fatigues of labor under a tropical sun, and usefully serving the avarice of its masters. The destiny of these slaves was to labor without relaxation, and to die. Prejudice proscribed their color, science disputed to them common reason, men affected to believe them beneath humanity, to excuse the excessive fatigue and pitiless treatment which they lavished upon them. Who did not believe that such a state of things must found a domination without limit or end? Alas! gentlemen, the contrary has happened; and here we must recognize the hand of that higher Power who never suffers human nature to be outraged with impunity, and who, from the wrong itself, knows how to draw the reparation.

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By a remnant of shame, these depraved beings were taught Christianity. Necessity had inured them to labor; and behold, at the end of a few centuries, labor and Christianity has upraised and regenerated them; labor and Christianity has made men where opinion saw none, and when the appointed time has come, from the negro slavetrade arises the republic of Hayti.

* March 10, 1826 (Moniteur, p 297), on the Ordinance of April 17, 1825, recognizing the independence of St. Domingo.

"What Providence had made, the king of France has recognized. As a Frenchman and a Christian, I thank the king for it, and congratulate France."

What has labor, what has Christianity become? A curious comparison shows that labor is not, as is pretended, destroyed. It was nearly at the same epoch, under the Restoration, that France consented to the independence of Hayti, and contributed to the independence of Greece. Open the General Table of the Commerce of France for 1858, and we will see that the amount of importations into France,

These figures are indeed much below those which represented the products of the island before 1790. We are to labor, therefore, for progress in the future, but without a return to the past. We have before our eyes the vices of the blacks; before, we had equally the vices of the blacks, with the vices of the whites in addition.

Was Christianity widely diffused before 1791? Assuredly not; in all slave countries, imperfectly taught by an inevitably corrupt clergy, it does not profoundly penetrate the soul, but makes a few saints, many hypocrites, and a multitude of superstitious or indifferent persons. Religion desires free souls. How could this religion without root have been maintained during massacres, in the midst of ruins, in a veritable social decomposition, under chiefs like Dessalines, Pétion, or Christophe ?

Nevertheless the negroes, whom it had consoled, and who loved the Catholic worship, were never wholly detached from it. At the same time, the Holy See did not for a single day abandon this unhappy land. Pope Leo XII., by a bull, July, 1826, attempted to reorganize religious worship there. In 1834, Mgr. England, Bishop of Charleston, was sent thither as apostolic legate. In 1843, the sovereign pontiff despatched Mgr. Rosati, who laid down the basis of a concordat negotiated with President Boyer. Mgr. Rosati obtained the co-operation of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and the venerable Superior, M. Libermann, sent M. Tisserant thither, a kind communication from whom put me in possession of this touching correspondence.

For twenty years all efforts had stranded upon two insurmountable obstacles, the bad faith of the government, and the corruption of the clergy. There remained, indeed, at St. Domingo, scandalous priests in the heart of a population ignorant, yet well disposed towards relig

ion, if religion had been differently represented. Corruptio optimi pessima. What was to be done with priests, one of whom ended a sermon by the words: Long live the national sovereignty; long live the fair sex! To dare conceive the thought of converting to the faith such sheep and such shepherds, a saint was needed. Such an one was M. Tisserant, whose touching history seems made to present, in juxtaposition with the horrors to which human nature degrades itself, the spectacle of the sublimity to which it attains.

There were in the Seminary of St. Sulpitius, shortly after 1830, three young men; a creole of Bourbon, a creole of Mauritius, and a creole of St. Domingo. They confided to each other the resolution of devoting themselves to the evangelization of the negroes of their native land. God sent the same vocation to a pious and learned converted Jew by the name of Libermann; he was the first Superior, and they were the first members, of the Communion of the Sacred Heart of Mary (now united to that of the Holy Spirit). "The general end of our society," writes one of these founders, "is to occupy itself with the poorest and most abandoned peoples in the Church of God. The negroes being found at this moment more than any other people in this position, we have offered ourselves to evangelize them."

One of the three missionaries raised up religious worship at Mauritius, another at Bourbon. M. Tisserant was sent to St. Domingo before the concordat, prepared by Mgr. Rosati, had been signed. But this concordat remained without signature, and the young missionary, repulsed from the land to which he wished to consecrate his life, saw himself forced to sojourn at St. Lucia and Grenada, where he did so much good that efforts were made to detain him. But his heart drew him towards St. Domingo, where he finally penetrated. For laborious years, he surmounted incredible obstacles, triumphed over the clergy, the ruling power, and the climate, at length inspired respect and confidence, and came to the point of negotiating with General Hérard the plan of a new concordat. Whence came the obstacle? A letter written from France by M. Isambert denounced the missionaries and the court of Rome as the emissaries of a dangerous policy. The advice of so great a friend of the negroes was obeyed; it was no longer doubted that the priests had formed the project of delivering up the island to France, the still more dangerous domination of the Church of Rome was dreaded, it was demanded that the concordat should recognize the liberties of the Gallican Church. Behold all our superannuated quarrels revived for the use of St. Domingo, and an old liberal of 1831

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